Date: March : 11th 2011

Behavioral Finance
According to conventional financial theory, the world and its participants are, for the most part, rational "wealth maximizers". However, there are many instances where emotion and psychology influence our decisions, causing us to behave in unpredictable or irrational ways. Behavioral finance is a relatively new field that seeks to combine behavioral and cognitive psychological theory with conventional economics and finance to provide explanations for why people make irrational financial decisions. Why is behavioral finance necessary? When using the labels "conventional" or "modern" to describe finance, we are talking about the type of finance that is based on rational and logical theories, such as the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the efficient market hypothesis (EMH). These theories assume that people, for the most part, behave rationally and predictably. For a while, theoretical and empirical evidence suggested that CAPM, EMH and other rational financial theories did a respectable job of predicting and explaining certain events. However, as time went on, academics in both finance and economics started to find anomalies and behaviors that couldn't be explained by theories available at the time In the following section, we'll explore eight key concepts (three in this piece followed by five more later) that pioneers in the field of behavioral finance have identified as contributing to irrational and often detrimental financial decision making. As you read through them, consider whether you've fallen prey to some of these biases. Key Concept No.1. Anchoring Similar to how a house should be built upon a good, solid foundation, our ideas and opinions should also be based on relevant and correct facts in order to be considered valid. However, this is not always so. The concept of anchoring draws on the tendency to attach or "anchor" our thoughts to a reference point - even though it may have no logical relevance to the decision at hand. Anchoring can also be a source of frustration in the financial world, as investors base their decisions on irrelevant figures and statistics. For example, some investors invest in the stocks of companies that have fallen considerably in a very short amount of time. In this case, the investor is anchoring on a recent "high" that the stock has achieved and consequently believes that the drop in price provides an opportunity to buy the stock at a discount. When it comes to avoiding anchoring, there's no substitute for rigorous critical thinking. Be especially careful about which figures you use to evaluate a stock's potential. Successful investors don't just base their decisions on one or two benchmarks, they evaluate each company from a variety of perspectives in order to derive the truest picture of the investment landscape. Key Concept No.2. Mental Accounting Mental accounting refers to the tendency for people to separate their money into separate accounts based on a variety of subjective criteria, like the source of the money and intent for each account. According to the theory, individuals assign different functions to each asset group, which has an often irrational and detrimental effect on their consumption decisions and other behaviors.

Logically speaking, money should be interchangeable, regardless of its origin. Treating money differently because it comes from a different source violates that logical premise. Where the money came from should not be a factor in how much of it you spend - regardless of the money's source, spending it will represent a drop in your overall wealth. The key point to consider for mental accounting is that money is fungible; regardless of its origins or intended use, all money is the same. You can cut down on frivolous spending of "found" money, by realizing that "found" money is no different than money that you earned by working. As an extension of money being fungible, realize that saving money in a low- or no-interest account is fruitless if you still have outstanding debt. In most cases, the interest on your debt will erode any interest that you can earn in most savings accounts. While having savings is important, sometimes it makes more sense to forgo your savings in order to pay off debt. Key Concept No.3 Confirmation and Hindsight Biases It's often said that "seeing is believing". While this is often the case, in certain situations what you perceive is not necessarily a true representation of reality. This is not to say that there is something wrong with your senses, but rather that our minds have a tendency to introduce biases in processing certain kinds of information and events. It can be difficult to encounter something or someone without having a preconceived opinion. This first impression can be hard to shake because people also tend to selectively filter and pay more attention to information that supports their opinions, while ignoring or rationalizing the rest. This type of selective thinking is often referred to as the confirmation bias. In investing, the confirmation bias suggests that an investor would be more likely to look for information that supports his or her original idea about an investment rather than seek out information that contradicts it. Another common perception bias is hindsight bias, which tends to occur in situations where a person believes (after the fact) that the onset of some past event was predictable and completely obvious, whereas in fact, the event could not have been reasonably predicted. Many events seem obvious in hindsight. Psychologists attribute hindsight bias to our innate need to find order in the world by creating explanations that allow us to believe that events are predictable. For investors and other participants in the financial world, the hindsight bias is a cause for one of the most potentially dangerous mindsets that an investor or trader can have: overconfidence. In this case, overconfidence refers to investors' or traders' unfounded belief that they possess superior stock-picking abilities. (Contd.)